These days, Japanese films are based on everything from novels to game apps, but Yuya Ishii's "The Tokyo Night Sky Is Always the Densest Shade of Blue," which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival this year, is a rare feature inspired by a book of poetry. Its author, Tahi Saihate, is only 31 but has been publishing prolifically since 2004.

Ishii, 33, is also a former wunderkind who grabbed local and international attention a decade ago with a flurry of raucous indie films. He then shifted to more conventional subjects and treatments in "The Great Passage" (2013), "Our Family" (2014) and "The Vancouver Asahi" (2014).

This new film, scripted by Ishii, marks his return to the indie end of the spectrum, if with a glossier style than his early work. Also, the scrappiness has given way to a moody romanticism, mainly expressed in the poetic musings of the heroine, Mika (Shizuka Ishibashi). The setting, however, is the gritty one of hospitals, "girls bars" and construction sites where the characters' dreams of love, and their very existences, are threatened — or extinguished.